Published Thursday, Dec. 21, 2000, in the San Jose Mercury News
BY L.A. CHUNG
Mercury News Staff Columnist

At lunchtime, it's a normal holiday season weekday at Laguna and Geary streets. The 38 Geary bus is chugging along, making its screechy stops on both sides of the street. Traffic is whizzing by or turning north up into Japantown. And, as always, the Falun Gong protesters are sitting, silently sitting, across from the Chinese consulate.

For six weeks now, beginning the week before Thanksgiving, they have been here, a dozen to two dozen people, who bring their own mats and line the sidewalk across Laguna Street from the consulate. Rain or shine, they are here, varying in numbers and individual participants. They are old and young and in-between; during this holiday vacation period parents bring their school-age children with them.

Even if they do not call it a religion, it is, in essence, a quest for religious freedom in a country that only barely tolerates five official religions.

Some, like Winnie Ji, 23, an accountant who works downtown, come during their lunch breaks. Others, like 31-year-old Feng Wang, who has brought her 60-year-old mother, come for the whole day from San Jose.

By e-mail and by word of mouth, the arrangement is simple: Monday through Friday, from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., come to the corner and make peaceful protest. They sit under a banner aimed at the consulate's windows that says in English and Chinese, ``China: Stop Persecuting Falun Gong.'' They display pictures of police beating the group's adherents in China and hospital pictures of victims.

"We decided we would come and sit every day until the Chinese government stops the persecution of Falun Gong," said Chong Xu, 46, a coordinator from Berkeley, who has taken a two-month leave from his job as a welder of commercial restaurant equipment. He helps keep the flow of protesters consistent each day, makes sure no one litters or alienates the neighbors who live by the consulate, and assists the elderly people who often have the time to come and may need help. "Even when it rains, I come here. Anyone with integrity, with honesty would come forward to support this."

For those who have missed this, the Chinese government began a crackdown last year on the practice of Falun Gong, which some call a quasi-religion, and what the government calls []. It is a combination of spiritual practice and physical exercise related to qigong, an exercise technique using controlled breathing, meditation and slow-motion calisthenics. Since the government officially banned Falun Gong in July 1999, hundreds of Falun Gong practitioners have been sentenced to long prison terms in China. Thousands have been placed in lesser forms of detention, like mental institutions and the lao gai, or labor camps, which does not require a trial, human rights groups say.

In October, adherents held a large rally at Justin Hermann Plaza near the Embarcadero, joined by U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, who called on the American government to express concerns about human rights violations against the group's followers.

Several Bay Area people were detained last year, including residents of Foster City, Fremont, San Jose and San Leandro. Such people were generally released back to the United States, but last week, China took a new tack. It indicted New York resident Teng Chunyan, a Chinese citizen with permanent-resident status in the United States. Teng had come to China in March and was accused of providing foreign journalists with photographs of Falun Gong practitioners detained in a psychiatric hospital, according to the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy. Teng is the first foreign-based Falun Gong member to be put on trial.

On Monday, protesters held a memorial opposite the consulate in San Francisco for Zhao Xin, a 32-year-old Beijing college lecturer who succumbed this month to her injuries from a beating in June. Zhao's vertebrae were crushed in the arrest by Chinese police at a park while performing the Falun Gong exercises, Xu said.

"My heart is really moved," Wang said. "I want to increase the awareness in society about this." Wang took four hours off from her job as an engineering product manager at a semiconductor company. About half of the protesters who come are from San Francisco, and half come from Palo Alto, Fremont, Oakland and San Jose, where the practice has grown rapidly.

At Wang's practice site in the South Bay, one that draws from San Jose, Campbell and Los Gatos, Wang said there are people whose heritage is not Chinese, but Irish, Indian, Iranian, Ukranian and Peruvian.

They've become part of the landscape on Geary and Laguna. Every morning they wave and say, "Good morning," to the San Francisco police officer on duty, Xu said. Every evening, they say, "Good night." They are so familiar with the postal carrier they know when a substitute is walking the route and greet both warmly.

Across the street, a San Francisco police officer sits in his vehicle, reading a paper. The cops hardly think a dozen old people and mothers with kids in tow are a threat to the People's Republic of China, but as a matter of policy, the police dispatch an officer whenever there is a demonstration in front of the consulate.

The officer on the scene may change, but one keeps in contact with the protesters and the consulate: officer Jeff Roth, the event coordinator at Northern Station, which handles more than a few consulates because the district straddles the Western Addition, Pacific Heights and the Marina.

"They aren't happy about it, but they don't really have a say in the matter," Roth said of the consulate officials.

Other protests -- over Tibet and the like -- have brought requests from the consulate in the past for police to stop protesters, Roth said. "We've explained, 'Yes, the consulate is Chinese property, but this is America -- the protesters have their First Amendment rights.'"

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